A New American Globe: Cartography, Identity, and Craft in Early Vermont

James Wilson of Bradford created the first commercially available globes in America. Beginning in 1810, he produced and sold terrestrial and celestial globes for home and classroom use, advertising them as superior American-made products. Wilson's path to globemaking was far from obvious, and he has been celebrated as a unique Vermont genius.

How much of what we know about him is anecdotal and hearsay, and how much is
based in close examination of quality archival sources?